I'd like to share with you one of
the most exciting pieces of work that this office is engaged in.
And this initiative we started last year called together for tomorrow.
And the idea is working with people at the local level.
You identify the community needs around education.
Working with principals and teachers and parents and community groups.
Every time we go out,
we realize there is great work already going on the ground.
Sometimes people don't even realize how good it is.
And yet nobody is helping them lift that up and take it from,
maybe, one school or a neighborhood school,
the one side of the city to the other to lift those things,
to lift them up as promising practices or best practices.
Then we found that we talk about the larger agenda,
what's keeping children from achieving?
What are the barriers to people working together?
The greatest power we have, if we have any,
as government, is the power to convene.
And we're very often able to get people to come into a room, sit at a table,
that's their table anyhow,
and talk about what they could do better together than they do separately.
They might not convene the meeting,
but they'll come if we invite them into that space.
And so, that we see it's just wonderful,
energies come together and people say, well,
I've been talking to you on email but I never met you before.
We've been in meetings where people say, well,
if I could only reach so and so,
and so and so is in the same room.
And then we're able to help build bridges and sometimes
even point people to resources that they didn't
know were available because people are talking together about the same thing.
And so then we take some time and celebrate the good work that's going on.
And you know just in the human experience just taking time to be kind,
to say thank you, we need you,
we appreciate you, that goes so far.
It goes farther than money in many circumstances
because people are so hungry for recognition.
They don't even recognize that that's what it is.
But as soon as you- Just like with young people,
as soon as you can clap your hands for them,
pat them on the back and say, that a girl,
that a boy, they want to go ahead and do more.
And we found that's true with organizations.
That's true with school systems.
It's true with principals.
It's true with teachers.
So sometimes we're just that cheerleading force that says,
you know, there's some good stuff that people don't know about.
We are so problem centered in America that
I think we missed the opportunity to be solution and
pray centered to take people to spaces that they might not otherwise be encouraged to go.
So closing the achievement gap
has been one of the big issues and especially in our most vulnerable communities.
People talk about the fact that there's such a separation
between children of color and low income families than the norm.
So why do we keep saying that?
One of my most awkward moments here at the department was at
a senior staff meeting when every sentence started with what we can't do,
what our children aren't doing.
We've got all of these failing schools.
We got 5,000 failing schools.
So I was new enough on staff to take the moment to say,
"Now how many schools do we have?"
We have 5,000 failing schools.
"No, how many schools do we have?"
"Oh, we have 100,000 public schools."
I said, "I think we have to have good news.
I'm in the Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership office.
So you want me to get people engaged in
our work and all we're telling them is the bad news?
Help me somebody."
And so we've started changing the narrative so people can hear.
Yeah, we have schools that have problems that we need to work with.
We need to invest in those schools.
But we also need to encourage them by saying, look,
we got 95,000 public schools that are serving our children and families well.
And we want everybody to be in that space.
And so its great now to be able to celebrate that even though we
have still too many children in dropout factories.
We have 2.6 million students who are now not in dropout factories.
To have even one child there is too many.
But it is worth taking a moment to clap and celebrate that improvements are being made.